Clip My Wings And Then Ask Me To Fly
by FreakShowWalking
Summary: Rachel-centric one-shot. Set an undetermined amount of time after the season one finale, "Original Sin", with the team imprisoned in Binghamton's Building 7.


My attempt at a Rachel voice (though obviously somewhat skewed by the idea that at Binghamton, in Building 7, they experiment _brutally_ on alphas using drugs and such). As she's one of my favourite characters, if not my absolute favourite character, I hope I've done her justice and not butchered her characterization. I'm aware that her anxiety and issues with asserting herself etc. are emphasized here, but I've tried my best to balance it and still keep her with that reservoir of inner strength. If there are future Rachel pieces, and there probably will be, expect them to better service her character.

There are hints at Rachel/Nina in this, but not so overpowering as to colour the piece, therefore if you don't like that pairing you can still read and hopefully enjoy this piece.

Please read and review~!

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the words, everything else (the characters, world etc.) belongs to the ALPHAS 'behind the scenes' team (writers, creators, actors etc.).

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><p>White walls, a green bench-bed, red needle marks all over paling skin. Your world is Building Seven, your cell, so much pain and so much fear and a fog of confusion overlaying it all. Pin-pricks cover your arms but it isn't the experiments or interrogations that make tears stream down and stain your cheeks (for once). Thoughts of Dr. Rosen, Gary, Bill, Hicks…. Nina. Something deep down inside of you has been hurting for so long now, and it's as if the walls of Binghamton amplify that hurting so that your very heart, your soul, is aching and weighed down this terribleness. The security is so much tighter this time around, the windows tinted so dark you can't see out of them but you know they can see in (they're always watching, touching, taking what was never theirs, never listening). There's nothing to hear unless they come for you, unless you're shouting and screaming and crying so much you eventually lose your voice so you just cry more because what else can you do when they leave you in here and you barely know up from down? There's plenty to feel and nothing to feel as you run hands over cold walls almost blinding in the light, through hair that isn't so neat anymore, over scratches and bruises and things that are there one moment and gone the next. You wonder if they drug you. Decide that they must be then forget and panic. Always panicking, always hurting; you've blacked out from hyperventilated more times than they've that had to tranquilize you for fighting them.<p>

Sometimes you're so awake and everything's so clear; all the bad and the dark and the wrong and the past (the secrets, running, hiding, being caught and seeing everyone dragged off into black vans, more guns than people in your vision), those times when you know what you shouldn't say or do, why they're saying and doing what they are. Other times it's like they've pulled the curtains over your mind and there's snatches of this and a half-remembered moment of that of her of them, the room grows smaller as Binghamton grows bigger and you've fallen though the looking glass as the Mad Hatter and his friends greet you with restraints and court you with chemicals. Which mushroom do you take, Alice (which one Rachel which one)? When you sleep, when they put you to sleep, there are dreams of family, trust, and hugs and laughter, there are nightmares that might be nightmares or they might just be your worst days. You heighten your smell and it's all so clean, too clean, and so sterile that it burns and you vomit bile. You heighten your sight and may as well be blind, either there's incomprehensible white or you look at yourself (but you can't look, don't want to see the mess of you). You heighten your hearing, there's a hum, a buzz - white noise, once twice three times you've convinced yourself you can hear her shouting him growling them taunting. You lie back on the bench-bed.

Clanking, creaking, footsteps and breathing as the door opens and demons walk in, bad men with bad intentions. Then bang.

Are you awake? It's hard to tell, everything is the same (but different). You know they're here as well (with you but not). The team. You know they're fighters, they're tough and they'll keep trying to find a way out, to fix this. You believe in them (they believe in you, you hope). They'll find a way out; you'll find a way out. Somebody will fix this. Something hits the other side of your door. A person (a body). An alpha. Maybe you can hear a voice (her voice, maybe, maybe not). You don't bother shouting out, no matter what you say to whom you say it when you say it nobody ever listens unless you're not completely here and they've got you singing to the tune they want to hear.

So you take a deep breathe, focus, try to find a weak spot, draw back an arm (a fist), rush at the door. Your own voice fills your ears once more as what little energy you have left is put into escaping, fighting, surviving. Pain explodes in your first, your arm, your everything. You back off and try again.

And again. And again. And again. And again.


End file.
